Herb Alpert And The Tijuana Brass - Herb Alpert's Ninth (1967/2015) [HDtracks]

Digitally re-mastered edition of this 1967 album from the Pop/Jazz bandleader and his Tijuana Brass. Issued in December 1967, Herb Alpert's Ninth reached the #4 spot on the pop albums chart, spending a total of 18 weeks in the US Top 40. 'A Banda' was a Top 40 Pop hit, and 'Carmen' and 'The Happening' both made the AC top 5. Part of the Herb Alpert signature series, this special edition is presented in a deluxe digipak, has been completely re-mastered.
The cover art of Herb Alpert's Ninth is hilarious – a bust of grim old Beethoven wearing a Herb Alpert sweatshirt, a parody of the pop icon fad going around at the time and maybe a comment on the rock world's newfound pretensions in the wake of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper. In any case, Herb Alpert's Ninth does introduce some highbrow pretensions of sorts to Alpert's Ameriachi sound – some very subtly applied strands of strings on several numbers and a madcap, multi-sectioned fantasy of tunes from Bizet's Carmen that is full of in-jokes from the opera and the TJB's hits. Alpert is also quite aware of the brave new world around him; he does a spare, lazy, yet entirely novel-sounding cover version of Sgt. Pepper's "With a Little Help from My Friends" and gives the Supremes' "The Happening" a bouncy workout. There is also a touching memorial to the late Ervan Coleman ("Bud") and another underrated contribution from the Alpert songwriting team, Sol Lake's swinging "Cowboys and Indians." The TJB still churns out the Latin American rhythms, but sometimes with a shade less exuberance.